by Paul Roscoe
Mr Ermey looked at Tom, who was swaying ever so slightly. He pictured Tom’s parents, clad in their nightwear, clinging to each other in the middle of the living room. Shame and sadness flooded through him.
It’s almost as if they were my own parents.
“In a way, they were,” he said, answering his own thought aloud.
Mr Ermey turned to Buddy and noticed that he was looking straight through him, his eyes focused on the kitchen doorway at the end of the hall. Suddenly, and with tremendous embarrassment, he saw Lisa Taylor raise her shirt in the storeroom gloom. Unable to help himself, he visualised the way her breasts moved as she yanked her shirt back down again. Mr Ermey shook his head and a polystyrene tray floating in a green hedge replaced the image. He saw himself holding the tray in one hand as he tried to fluff the leaves back into shape with the other. How long had he stood there, fluffing leaves, making sure that no one could see through the small gap? And for that matter, while he had been doing that, how long had he been fantasising about having sex with a teenage girl in the cleaning closet?
He stared at the old gang (that’s what we call ourselves), wondering.
Of the four of them, Alex’s eyes looked the clearest; of the four of them, he was the only one who appeared to be looking at him. Alex’s face was a reflection in the mirror, staring back at him with a matching level of disbelief. Finally, the sinking feeling began to level out, and as he merged fully with his guests – as the five truly became the one they had always been – Mr Ermey could hear the Thud! Thud! Thud! of the drains blending with the Thud! Thud! Thud! of the front door, and he saw himself at the bathroom sink, plunging a razor into foamy water.
Helen Brenné is the girl I love. She has chin-length blonde hair that keeps falling in her face, and the way she nibbles her pencils is the most erotic gesture I’ll ever imagine.
Mr Ermey looked at his long-expected visitors and smiled.
So, this four actually made it. They finally came for me.
“Sir?” Mary’s voice was barely a whisper. “Can you see us?”
She’d lost that cloudy, distracted look. They all had. Mr Ermey took an instinctive step back as if they might suddenly lunge at him, but the four teenagers simply stared at him with expressions of awe.
Sir? Oh yes, that’s right. She thinks I’m her teacher.
Sir.
“Yes, Mary, I can see you fine. You too, Alex, and Tom.” He met their gazes in turn. “You too, Buddy.”
“Why can you see us when no one else can?” Buddy demanded. Despite the aggression in his voice, Buddy looked tired and confused.
No one moved.
No one said anything.
Realising his place as host, but also sensing the absurdity of the situation, Mr Ermey gestured towards the hall behind him. “Do come in, I’ll tell you what I can.”
Hesitantly, the old gang entered Mr Ermey’s house. As they headed for the dining room, Buddy muttered to no one in particular, “This is the place, alright.”
Mr Ermey quietly closed the door, and then leant against it, breathing hard. Counting under his breath, he pulled the safety chain, slid the small bolts at the top and bottom, and flipped the catch up on the main lock. Standing back to survey his handiwork, he performed a small count-check. He looked at the chain, one; at the bolts, two; at the main lock, three. It was only a small count-check, but it felt fine.
That’s one locked door.
He turned towards the hall.
Mary was standing there, watching him. She had wanted to ask him how long her Art teacher had been an ornithologist, but had forgotten about that for the moment. Her host had spent the last few minutes lost in a trance: his breathing had become slow and heavy, and he had stood quite still, just staring at the door. Now, as he walked towards her, she noticed signs of embarrassment: a flush of redness creeping up his cheeks, eyes dropping immediately after meeting hers. Feeling her own small embarrassment at snooping, Mary turned and slipped into the dining room where the others were.
As Mr Ermey walked in, Tom was examining a placemat.
2
“Please, be seated,” Mr Ermey said. “Can I get you anything?”
“An ashtray, please,” Mary said, pulling out a chair. “And some water.”
“Tea, coffee?”
“I’ll have some water as well,” Tom answered. Alex and Buddy asked for the same.
Mr Ermey disappeared into the kitchen, removed five glasses from an overhead cupboard, and filled them at the sink. He emptied an overflowing ashtray into the pedal bin and wiped it clean with a sheet of kitchen roll. He piled the glasses, ashtray, cigarettes and lighter onto a tray, and carried it into the dining room. Everyone was sitting in the places he’d always imagined them in: Mary and Alex at one side of the table, Buddy and Tom opposite. He set the tray in the middle and sat down.
“So what was that, at the door?” Tom asked, taking a glass.
“What do you mean?” Mr Ermey clenched his hands together.
“I mean the little daydream, or vision.” Tom looked around the table and saw just what he expected: the shared look of agreement and relief that someone was asking exactly the right question.
Mr Ermey nodded. “I thought something like that might happen, if you ever showed up here, although I guess it was inevitable that you eventually would.”
“But what was it?”
“What did you see?”
“David Hartman getting beaten up…but it didn’t look like us doing the beating. You couldn’t tell who it was. And then we went to phone for an ambulance, but David was already gone.” Tom looked at Mary and Alex, then Buddy. “You all saw the same thing, right?”
They murmured agreement.
“So what was it? Were you there the day we beat up David?”
Mr Ermey stared at the faces surrounding him, their gazes now intent. Beneath the confusion in their eyes, he thought he could see another emotion simmering underneath: fury. He took his pack of cigarettes and lighter from the tray and stacked them neatly in front of him, feeling both defensive and also a little angry at the idea of having to go through this all over again.
But they’ve taken the trouble to actually visit me this time; I owe them an explanation at least.
“I was there when David Hartman was beaten up, yes. But I don’t actually know if you four were responsible. As you saw, I tried to comfort him, I tried to do the best I could but…he disappeared.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know if we were responsible?” Buddy said. “Why else are we here? Of course we’re responsible.”
Mr Ermey smiled bitterly. “Of course you are. But just who and what are you? A bunch of ghosts?” He reached over and swatted a hand at Buddy, who tried to block him. Mr Ermey’s hand cut through Buddy’s forearm as if it was smoke; the hand continued through Buddy’s head and sank into Tom’s shoulder. For good measure, he reached over and wafted his left hand through Mary and Alex. “You’re not even really here, so how can you be so sure about what you did and did not do?”
Alex said, “I know that I’m here right now as a ghost just as I know I was hit by a car as a living person yesterday. Just because you can wave your hand through me doesn’t really change much from where I’m sitting. I know the things that I did.”
“So you believe in ghosts then?”
Alex leant forward against the table, testing its solidity with his elbows. He folded his arms and said nothing.
“Until I became one, I didn’t believe in ghosts,” Mary said. “I’m sure none of us did. But the situation is what it is; there’s no point denying it.”
“So what did you think ghosts where, before you became one yourself?”
Mary thought for a moment, then said, “If anyone claimed to see a ghost, I would have to say that that person was imagining it.”
“And I’m not imagining you, I see?”
“Of course not.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because I exist. I�
��m here.” Mary tapped the table with her index finger. “Right here and now.”
Mr Ermey took a sip of water. Even though the sun was still blazing outside, the room seemed to have gone darker; the walls seemed closer. “Indeed you are here,” he finally said, “but you’re also someplace else too, of that I am certain.”
“Where else could I possibly be?”
“Oh, I imagine that right now you, Mary, are at school, no doubt being taught by a much better Art teacher than I could ever be – someone who could actually teach you something, for a start. Alex is probably throwing javelins with great aplomb, for all I know, wowing Mr Ortiz and the entire class. Tom might be sitting in the back of a dusty classroom, rocking back on his chair and etching obscenities into a desk with a compass, and Buddy may very well be astonishing his History teacher with the exactitude and diligence of his homework. You all have real lives separate from what I have imagined, and I’m positive they’re more detailed and varied than the ones I’ve dreamt up for you today. Oh, I guess I might be more accurate in some areas than others, say, if I’ve seen any of you with other people. Like you, Alex, with that Brenné girl, I’ve seen the two of you together around school. Or you, Tom, with Angela. I guess I might be more on the money with you two, but it doesn’t really matter. You fitted the bill. I hate to put it so bluntly, but you did.”
“What bill?” Tom asked.
“The kids I saw beating up David Hartman, of course. That bill. I never really got a good look at them, but after a while I started to substitute certain faces. I learned to make do. Yours are not the first by any means. Ask any member of the police: memory is the poorest testament. Do any of you know Daniel Timley? Karl Jenkins? Peter Oatley? Susan Mayhew?”
Mr Ermey shook his head.
“Of course you do, what am I thinking? Well, they’ve beaten poor little David up and left him for dead more times that you four ever have. And David has exacted his own particular brand of revenge on them innumerable times. As a matter of fact, Karl Jenkins’s suicide was especially gruesome – he gouged out his own eyes with the rims of his spectacles and then jammed them into one of the sockets. With a remarkable level of determination, and a strong wrist action, he managed to scramble his brains quite nicely.
“Only you four have ever managed to join together in the afterlife and find your way here, that’s your achievement, and yours alone. But I hasten to add that this was not your first attempt. Not by a long way.”
“I don’t accept this,” Mary said. “How can I be here, talking with you, and be someplace else, living a completely different life? It just doesn’t make any sense. If I was in both places, then surely I would be aware of two different existences at the same time. I’d be split. Schizo.”
“To accept it, you must accept this: you are my Mary. Just as you are my Alex, my Tom, and my Buddy. You’re all just facsimiles, ghosts. You should be thankful that you’ve got a real life beyond all of this.” Mr Ermey gestured to the table, to the walls, to himself.
A silence drew out as each thought of their own questions, and then found their own answers. Finally, Tom spoke:
“So you’re the caretaker at St Vincent’s?”
The others, Mary especially, shot him looks of confusion, which gradually softened into expressions of dawning realisation.
Mr Ermey grinned. “Thirty long years.”
3
“So how long have you been interested in birds?” Mary asked.
They were in the back garden, standing on the narrow path that ran underneath the wide kitchen window. Mary was looking at the bird table and the assortment of feeders posted in different places around the garden: four red nets filled with peanuts hanging in the trees, and two wire mesh seed dispensers, one on the garage wall, and one on the washing-line. Their host was checking the back door; he had already walked away from it three times only to return, re-open, and re-lock.
Finally, Mr Ermey emerged from the corner of the house. He pointed at Mary with the deadlock key. “Please, I hate to be rude, but I’ll get this done a lot quicker if you just keep quiet. Feel free to talk among yourselves.” He thought for a moment, then corrected himself, “No, scrap that. Nobody talk. Yes. That’s it. I’ll just be a minute.” He disappeared again, whereupon the now familiar scrapes and turns, pulls and pushes, and, One, two, threes, recommenced. After a good session of this, the rear of the house finally fell silent, and Mr Ermey joined them outside the kitchen window.
“Have you ever thought about seeing a doctor about your, er…whatever it is?” Alex asked, his hands in his trouser pockets, his suit bunching up.
“I think he would need a psychiatrist, not a doctor,” Tom said.
“Or a bloody mental hospital,” Buddy added.
Looking at her shoes, Mary asked, “Sir, what exactly is the matter with you?”
“Don’t ask personal questions!” Mr Ermey bellowed at them, although a smile danced at the corners of his mouth. An awkward period of silence followed as the company tried to figure out if he was offended or not. As he carried on, it became clear he was actually delighted; that this was a favourite topic.
“My ‘whatever it is’ is nothing more than a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. O.C.D. Surely you’ve heard of it? Lots of people have a touch of it.”
Tom nodded. “My dad’s a bit like that. Especially when we used to go on holiday, he’d unplug everything, and then make my mother and I wait in the car while he made sure he’d actually done it right.”
“Well, there you go, only I do that all the time. When I’m under stress, it gets worse. Like today. Even so, I don’t need a doctor or a psychiatrist, I’ve got my little routine, and that does me well enough.”
“So what’s your routine?” Buddy asked. “Just check and check and check like a complete and utter idiot?”
“As I said, today’s an exception.” He started to saunter in the general direction of the garage, and they followed. “Have any of you been in a bar where you had to ask for a key to use the toilet?”
“We’re still at school,” Tom said. “Well, we were…”
“They do that at Bernie’s Burgers,” Mary said. “It’s a prefab diner behind the bus station, and there’s a smelly little port-a-cabin thing attached at the back. It’s a real dive.”
Mr Ermey nodded. “And does the key come on a fob?”
“Yep. It’s massive.” She held the index fingers and thumbs of both hands out to indicate its size.
“Well, where Bernie’s Burgers have a big fob, I have a routine of counting. You see, the reason they put the key on such a massive fob is so that no one accidentally puts it in their purse or pocket and takes it with them. It’s just too conspicuous for anyone to forget they have it. Likewise, counting is my fob, something conspicuous enough linked to a smaller action so that I don’t forget I’ve performed it.”
“But why do you need something like that?” Buddy asked. For the first time, he sounded genuinely interested. “Can’t you just say, ‘There, I’ve done that,’ and forget about it?”
“That’s a very good question, and I wish I had the answer. You’d think it would be as simple as that, wouldn’t you? After all, it is for most people going about their day-to-day business. As far as I can see, though, there are two problems. The one you have so bluntly identified, the endless checking, can be remedied by the use of a routine – to an extent at least. But what can’t be remedied is the problem that leads up to the checking.”
“Which is?”
“Doubt, my child. Doubt.”
“Doubt of what?”
“Of everything. Myself. The world. Things I’ve done, or not done. Quite simply, on a day-to-day basis – and on bad days, a moment-to-moment basis – I find it nearly impossible to believe my eyes. It’s like there’s always something I’ve missed. Something I’ve forgotten. It’s usually just small stuff, like taking a thing and then finding it back where it was with no real memory of replacing it. But sometimes it’s more i
mportant than that. I turn around, and things just aren’t the way I thought they were. I believe you have had some experience of this yourself?”
The old gang nodded.
“And when I find myself wondering why things aren’t the way I remember making them, I become ever more doubtful of my actions. Of myself. The silly thing, of course, is that it makes no difference at all. For all the checking in the world, I still manage to do things without realising, or dream I’ve done things I haven’t.” Mr Ermey raised an eyebrow. “In those moments, I disappear.”
“You disappear?” Mary said.
“Yes. I become someone else. Or somebodies else. Whoever it is that does these things, ‘cos it certainly isn’t me.”
“You mean you become us?” Tom asked. The group fell silent, and Mr Ermey looked down at a line of weeds sprouting through a crack in the concrete and nodded.
“How can that be?”
Mr Ermey observed the group that had now gathered before his garage. “Oh, disappearing is easy, and it can happen to anyone,” he said, now watching their reactions closely, savouring the moment. “The day is full of cracks through which we might slip.”
They gazed at him with dead eyes, disbelief now replaced with bewilderment. He laughed harshly, lit up, and puffed blue smoke into the hot day.
“So what if I get a little ash on my suit?” he muttered to himself as he rustled his set of keys, looking for the right one. Then, cigarette clenched between his teeth, he worked the stiff garage padlock and tossed it to the floor.
“You never answered my question, Sir,” Mary said. “How long have you been interested in birds?”